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Antecedent   Listen
adjective
Antecedent  adj.  
1.
Going before in time; prior; anterior; preceding; as, an event antecedent to the Deluge; an antecedent cause.
2.
Presumptive; as, an antecedent improbability.
Synonyms: Prior; previous; foregoing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Antecedent" Quotes from Famous Books



... possibility: but no man can doubt the existence of a ground of value; 2. that a measure is posterior to the value; for, before a value can be measured or estimated, it must exist: but a ground of value must be antecedent to the value, like any ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... philosopher than in Shelley the idler. It is seen in his repellent no less than in his amiable weaknesses; in the unteachable folly of a love that made its goal its starting-point, and firmly expected spiritual rest from each new divinity, though it had found none from the divinities antecedent. For we are clear that this was no mere straying of sensual appetite, but a straying, strange and deplorable, of the spirit; that (contrary to what Mr. Coventry Patmore has said) he left a woman not because he was ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson

... of subsequent depreciation? And, moreover, which of us shall trace the contemporary tendencies, the one towards honour, the other towards dishonour? Or who shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilised have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of their mediocrities. No ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or laugh, but has the excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by some ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... His method was to give the authorities on both sides, but to render no decision. His boldness in raising such questions for debate was new, and his failure to give the students a decision was quite unusual, while his claim that reason was antecedent to faith was startling. Even after being driven from Paris, in part because of this boldness and in part because of a most unfortunate incident which deservedly ruined his career in the Church, students in numbers followed him to his retreat and listened to his teachings. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... and, in the final sentence, the measure of his fine proclaims him eminently guilty. The total estimate which he delivered on oath to the House of Commons amounted to 106,543 pounds 5 shillings and 6 pence, exclusive of antecedent settlements. Two different allowances of 15,000 pounds and of 10,000 pounds were moved for Mr. Gibbon; but, on the question being put, it was carried without a division for the smaller sum. On these ruins, with the skill and credit, of which parliament had not been ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... to think that the climate was ever different? Geologists assure us that "great oscillations of climate have occurred in times immediately antecedent to the peopling of the earth by man."[136] But in Central and Northern Asia there is evidence of such fluctuations of temperature in a much more recent period. In 1803, on the banks of the Lena, in latitude 70 deg., the entire ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... idols, as divine grace differs from human works. Christianity is not one of many species of generic religion, but the only true and real religion. Nor is Christianity related to other religions as the highest stage of an evolutionary process is to its antecedent lower stages. Christianity is divine revelation from above, not human evolution from below. Based, as it is, on special divine interposition, revelation, and operation, Christianity is the supernatural ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... inspiration or aspiration to be a first or second Virgin-Mother—her duplicate, antecedent, or subsequent. What I am remains to be proved by the good I do. We need much humility, wisdom, and love to perform the functions of foreshadowing and foretasting heaven within us. This glory is molten ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... morals, to formalism in art, to absolutism in the social ordering, to obscurantism in thought. Every social improvement since has been the outcome of that doctrine in one form or another. The conviction that the character and lot of man are indefinitely modifiable for good, was the indispensable antecedent to any general and energetic endeavour to modify the conditions that surround him. The omnipotence of early instruction, of laws, of the method of social order, over the infinitely plastic impulses of the human creature—this was the maxim which brought men of such widely different temperament ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... somebody has said, "are like shoes—that is the best form which best fit the feet that are to wear them." Shoes are to be fitted to the feet, not the feet to the shoes, and feet vary in size and conformation. There is, in regard to government, as distinguished from the state, no antecedent right which binds the people, for antecedently to the existence of the government as a fact, the state is free to adopt any form that it finds practicable, or judges the wisest and best for itself. Ordinarily the form ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... the nourishing of infants with poor milk, with bread or flour-pap increases the disposition to pulmonary consumption. If this defective nourishment is continued, scrofula will surely follow and this is a stage antecedent ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum

... are antecedent to the Play, and are related to make the Conduct of it more clear to us. But 'tis a fault to choose such subjects for the Stage, as will inforce us upon that rock: because we see that they are seldom listened to by the audience; ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... early on the borders of the Nile, what has since been repeated in every country; as soon as a new system was formed its novelty excited quarrels and schisms; then, gaining credit by persecution itself, sometimes it effaced antecedent ideas, sometimes it modified and incorporated them; then, by the intervention of political revolutions, the aggregation of states and the mixture of nations confused all opinions; and the filiation of ideas being lost, theology fell into a chaos, and became ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... based on his analysis of past events. In the one case we find the idealist seeking to set the world violently right; in the other case we find the historian and the scientist—influenced no doubt, as all men must be, by certain hopes, yet totally regardless of personal desire—stating the antecedent conditions which must exist previous to the birth of a new historic ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... determinate; from another aspect, as separated into two great kingdoms, that of necessity (mineral, vegetable, animal), and that of grace (humanity). He displayed it willed by God, projected by God, created by God; governed by God according to antecedent and consequent wills, that is, by general wills (God desires man to be saved) and by particular wills (God wishes the sinner to be punished), and the union of the general wills is the creation, and the result of all the particular wills is Providence. Nature ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... the bearing of the educator's career on the conditions now obtaining in this country, the author has little to say about his private life, choosing rather to present him as a man of the world. Tracing his career, the author mentions his antecedent, his poverty, his training at Hampton, his first ventures and the establishment of Tuskegee. He then treats with more detail Dr. Washington's national prominence, widening influence, ability to organize, and increasing power. He carefully notes, too, the great educator's chief characteristics, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... Antecedent to the introduction of Clara, the true heroine of the novel, we have the story of Estelle, also a white slave. At first this story seems like an episode, but it is soon found to be inextricably interwoven with the plot. The author has shown remarkable dexterity in preserving the unity of the action ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... of his work, a like conscious effort may be detected, and, at the same time, a lack of confidence in his ability to express himself in unmistakable language. He avoids periodic sentences, uses only the simpler subjunctive constructions, repeats the antecedent in relative clauses, and, not infrequently, adopts a formal language closely akin to that of specifications and contracts, the style with which he was, naturally, most familiar. He ends each book with a brief summary, almost a formula, somewhat like a sigh of relief, in which the reader unconsciously ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... This is not an unmixed delight, but blended with no small uneasiness. The delight we have in such things, hinders us from shunning scenes of misery; and the pain we feel prompts us to relieve ourselves in relieving those who suffer; and all this antecedent to any reasoning by an instinct that works us to its own purposes ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... in accelerating matters. What had been done secretly and slowly could be done more swiftly and openly when so plausible an excuse could be given for it. As a matter of fact, the preparations were long antecedent to the raid. The building of the forts at Pretoria and Johannesburg was begun nearly two years before that wretched incursion, and the importation of arms was going on apace. In that very year, 1895, a considerable sum was spent in ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... much to contend with; above all, an antecedent prejudice against the Cookes, in reality a prejudice against the world, the flesh, and the devil, natural to any quiet community, and of which Mohair and its appurtenances were taken as the outward and visible signs. Older people came to Asquith for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... passage is expounded two ways. Some, referring the relative his to the first antecedent, take the meaning to be that no Jew or Christian shall die before he believes in Jesus: for they say, that when one of either of those religions is ready to breathe his last, and sees the angel of death before him, he shall ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... of the first stage of the development of the story, so also many of its incidents are probably suggested by the circumstances and details of the Eleusinian ritual. There were religious usages before there were distinct religious conceptions, and these antecedent religious usages shape and determine, at many points, the ultimate religious conception, as the details of the myth interpret or explain the religious custom. The hymn relates the legend of certain holy places, to which various impressive religious rites had attached ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... case," I rejoined. "You have the native American passion,—the passion for the picturesque. With us, I think it is primordial,—antecedent to experience. Experience comes and only shows us something we have ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James

... the cliff, it seemed as if it had happened ages ago. The new fact had fitted itself in with all the old predictions, forebodings, fears, and acquired the solidarity belonging to all events which have slipped out of the fingers of Time and dissolved in the antecedent eternity. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... with astonishment in their record, whether they are real or imaginary, acquire much of their importance from our knowledge of the antecedent circumstances and present condition of the actors. We connect the present with the past, and our sympathies becoming enlisted with the joys or sorrows of others, all that relates to them acquires the exaggerated importance ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... notified as to the whereabouts of said property. This manoeuvre works injustice unto no one. The owner stands in the same relation to his property as formerly; the subsequent holder assumes an obligation that was always his, to refund the goods or their value, with recourse against the antecedent seller. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... including magazine pieces, mimeographed plays, motion pictures, verses, pamphlets, fiction. In a blend of casualness and scholarship, it gives the substance and character of each item. Indeed, this bibliography reads like a continued story, with constant references to both antecedent and subsequent action. Pat Garrett, John Chisum, and other related characters weave all through it. A first-class bibliography that is also readable is almost ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... irresistibly forced upon the mind of the investigator that "there is nothing new under the sun". No matter how far back he may push his inquiry in attempting to unveil the true source of any important idea, he will always find at some antecedent date the germ, either of the same inventive conception, or of something which is hardly distinguishable from it. The habit of research into the origin of improved industrial method must therefore help to strengthen the impression of the importance of gradual growth, ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... constantly manifested itself in the richer manner of his own contemporaries—the abuse of treating the uninflected English language as if it were an inflected language, in which variations and distinctions of case and gender and number help to connect adjective with substantive, and relative with antecedent. Sometimes, though less often, he distorts the natural order of the English in order to secure the Latin desideratum of finishing with the most emphatic and important words of the clause. His subject leads and almost forces him to an occasional pedantry of vocabulary, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... but I hope the stagnation will not be of long duration, for this I observe that Leadbetter counts the time on the path of Vertex 1, 2, 3 &c. from the right to the left hand or from the consequent to the antecedent,—But Ferguson on the path of Vertex counts the time 1, 2, 3 &c. from the left to the right hand, according to the order of numbers, so that that is regular, shall compensate for irregularity. Now sir if I can overcome this difficulty ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... China is not only elucidated by documents and events probably antecedent to the strictly historical period, such as the supposed voyage of an Emperor to the Far West, but it is also made easier to understand when we consider its possible indirect effects upon Japan. The barbarian kingdom of Wu does not really appear in Chinese history at ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... once more to Jason Philip's face, he thought he perceived in it the restlessness of an evil conscience. It seemed to him that this man was not acting from conviction but from an antecedent determination. It seemed to him further that he was faced, not merely by this one man and his rage and its accidental causes, but by a whole world in arms that was pledged to enmity against him. He had no inclination now to await ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... characters, and on the conduct of some of the fables, which he has subjoined to the different plays. In other respects he is not superior to the rest; in some, particularly in illustrating his author from antecedent or contemporary writers, he is inferior to them. A German critic of our own days, Schlegel, has surpassed him even in that ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... often be unreadable, but that the reporter finishes the unfinished sentences, and supplies meanings which are rather suggested than expressed. It would be easy to name members who are capable of writing admirable articles; but many of them owe their position in the House to some antecedent connection with the press, or have become, in some manner regularly "connected with the press;" and have acquired, by long practice, the capacity of article-writing. But take any half-dozen members indiscriminately out of the House, and set them ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... iconoclast, though he destroyed only that he might build up. He destroyed the superstition of a self-existing matter: {32} he also waged war against what I will venture to call the kindred superstition of a mysterious causal nexus between the physical antecedent and the physical consequent. On this side his work was carried on by Hume. Berkeley resolved our knowledge into a succession of 'ideas.' He did, no doubt, fall into the mistake of treating our knowledge as if it were a mere succession ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... theory, which I am now advocating, explains this by the supposition, that there is a feeling—a sense of right and wrong—in our nature, antecedent to and independent of experiences of utility. Where free play is allowed to the relations between man and man, this feeling attaches itself to those acts of universal utility or self-sacrifice, which are the products of our affections and sympathies, and which we term moral; while it may be, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... even the second was a disappointment. As soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit in my eyes; only a single scene, or, as is the way with these feuilletons, half a scene, without antecedent or consequence, like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my interest. The less I saw of the novel, the better I liked it: a pregnant reflection. But for the most part, as I said, we neither of us read anything in the world, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... right in saying that numbers were leaving Ireland because Ireland was joyless he was right in saying that it was the duty of every Irishman to spend his money in making Ireland a joyful country. He was speaking now in the interests of religion. A country is antecedent to religion. To have religion you must first have a country, and if Ireland was not made joyful Ireland would become a Protestant country in about twenty-five years. In support of this contention he produced figures showing the rate at which the Catholics were emigrating. But not only were the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... offers difficulties enough. It is not true that what is thoroughly understood is easily explained. Many excellent scholars have written very poor text-books because they had not learned the art of expression. A necessary antecedent of all good composition is a full and accurate knowledge of the subject; and even when one knows all about it, the clear expression of the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... lead the dance; be in the vanguard; introduce, usher in; have the pas; set the fashion &c. (influence) 175; open the ball; take precedence, have precedence; have the start &c. (get before) 280. place before; prefix; premise, prelude, preface. Adj. preceding &c. v.; precedent, antecedent; anterior; prior &c. 116; before; former; foregoing; beforementioned[obs3], abovementioned[obs3], aforementioned; aforesaid, said; precursory, precursive[obs3]; prevenient[obs3], preliminary, prefatory, introductory; prelusive, prelusory; proemial[obs3], preparatory. Adv. before; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Ludwig embodied in a fulminating letter which he wrote to Giovanna in answer to her defence against the charge of inaction in the matter of her late husband's murderers: "Giovanna, thy antecedent disorderly life, thy retention of the exclusive power in the kingdom, thy neglect of vengeance upon the murderers of thy husband, thy having taken another husband, and thy very excuses abundantly prove thy complicity in thy ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... succeeding letters. The syllable bits might very naturally, in the mind of honest Aby, be changed into bites. Dates have for certain reasons been omitted; but, from this and other passages, we may perceive that the date of this correspondence is antecedent to the bill for protecting minors ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... action of the spring, the more of the melody I shall hear, but the nature of the melody, or of the part heard, does not depend on the action of the spring. Only in the first case, really, does cause explain effect; in the others the effect is more or less given in advance, and the antecedent invoked is—in different degrees, of course—its occasion rather than its cause. Now, in saying that the saltness of the water is the cause of the transformations of Artemia, or that the degree of temperature determines the color and marks of the wings which a certain chrysalis will assume ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... consolation to the other. Wherefore, albeit great matters have preceded it, I mean to tell you a story, not less true than touching, of adventures whereof the issue was indeed felicitous, but the antecedent bitterness so long drawn out that scarce can I believe that it was ever sweetened by ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... determined not to leave a single trace of us upon earth. This great and decisive battle was fought in the neighbourhood of a place called Obtumba, Otumba, or Otompan. I have frequently seen it, and all the other battles we fought against the Mexicans, antecedent to the final conquest, admirably represented in Mexican paintings. It is now proper to mention, that we entered Mexico to relieve Alvarado on the 24th of June 1520, with upwards of 1300 soldiers, including 97 cavalry, 80 musketeers, and 80 armed with crossbows; having with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... by the proceeds of the first five numbers, the publishers were to have power to appropriate fifty pounds a month out of the two hundred pounds payable for authorship in the expenses of each number; but though this had been introduced with my knowledge, I knew also too much of the antecedent relations of the parties to regard it as other than a mere form to satisfy the attorneys in the case. The fifth number, which landed Martin and Mark in America, and the sixth, which described their first ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... with causes which have been associated in experience with such results. Let the inference span with its mighty arch a myriad of years, or link together the events of a few minutes, in each case the arch rises from the ground of familiar facts, and reaches an antecedent which is known to be a cause ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... corollary from these remarks is, that all causation is an exertion of mind, and is only figuratively applied to matter. It necessarily implies power, will, and action. An efficient cause—we are not speaking now of a mere antecedent—is that which is necessarily followed by the effect, so that, if it were known, the effect might be predicted antecedently to all experience. Cicero describes it with philosophical accuracy. "Causa ea est, quae id efficit, cujus est causa. Non sic causa intelligi debet, ut quod cuique ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... hardly fail to abound in details significant and pathetic, which especially invite poetic illustration. With the primary interest of that great crisis, many others, philosophical, social, and political, generally connect themselves. Antecedent to a nation's conversion, the events of centuries have commonly either conduced to it, or thrown obstacles in its way; while the history as well as the character of that nation in the subsequent ages is certain to have been in a principal ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... an account is, that the reality of the charge, the reason of incurring it, and the justice and necessity of discharging it, should all appear antecedent to the payment. No man ever pays first, and calls for his account afterwards; because he would thereby let out of his hands the principal, and indeed only effectual, means of compelling a full and fair one. But, in national business, there is an additional ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... merely the material form of some model previously existing in a higher world of ethereal spiritual forms; and Swedenborg's beautiful doctrine of Correspondences is a reappearance of the same idea. If their theory be true, may not the antecedent type of that strange force which in the material world we call electricity be a spiritual magnetism. As yet, we know extremely little of the laws of electricity, and we know nothing of those laws of spiritual attraction and repulsion which are perhaps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... sacramental observance this mysterious passion; and while partaking of the raw flesh of the victim, seems to be invigorated by a fresh draught from the fountain of universal life, to receive a new pledge of regenerated existence. Death is the inseparable antecedent of life; the seed dies in order to produce the plant, and earth itself is rent asunder and dies at the birth of Dionusos. Hence the significancy of the phallus, or of its inoffensive substitute, the obelisk, rising as an emblem of resurrection by the tomb of buried ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... address the Roman Bishop (Symmochus), who comes fifty-first in the Apostolic succession, as "Pope." Thus, if we were to write the history of Christianity, and indulge in remarks upon its chronology, we might say that since there were no antecedent Popes, and since the Apostolic line began with Symmochus (498 A.D.), all Christian records beginning with the Nativity and up to the sixth century are therefore "fabulous traditions," and all Christian chronology ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... are no breaks or leaps in the life of a people. Development may hasten or may slacken, and may seem to cease for a time, but it is always continuous; it always proceeds out of antecedent conditions, and if it be arrested for a time it begins again at the ...
— A Guide to Methods and Observation in History - Studies in High School Observation • Calvin Olin Davis

... treasurer of the newly created Children's Aid Society of that city, formed in 1853. Thus the work of the Children's Mission and the kindred service of the Warren Street Chapel, under the leadership of Charles Barnard, must be reckoned as the most immediate, if not the only American antecedent, of the great modern works of ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... everything we see, although not always reason in everything. It is the part of the historian to seek in the archives of a nation the reasons for the facts of common experience and observation, it is the part of the philosopher to moralize upon antecedent causes and present results. Neither of these positions is taken up by the author of this little book. He merely, as a rule, gives the picture of Dutch life now to be seen in the Netherlands, and in all things tries to be scrupulously fair to a people renowned ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... observer could have been found, that the hour had struck for the fulfilment of those grim apprehensions of revolution that had risen in the minds of many shrewd men, good and bad, in the course of the previous half century. No great event in history ever comes wholly unforeseen. The antecedent causes are so wide-reaching, many, and continuous, that their direction is always sure to strike the eye of one or more observers in all its significance. Lewis the Fifteenth, whose invincible weariness and heavy disgust veiled a penetrating discernment, measured ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... Writ calls God to witness, since it is His word that Holy Writ contains. Therefore, if to swear is to call God to witness, whoever invoked the authority of Holy Writ would swear. But this is false. Therefore the antecedent ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... it was printed at Amsterdam, under the direction of Monsieur Forbier, who published a French translation of it. Dr. John Bramhall, bishop of Derry in Ireland, in the Preface to his Book entitled a Defence of true Liberty, from an antecedent and extrinsical Necessity, tells us, 'that ten years before he had given Mr. Hobbs about sixty exceptions, one half political, and the other half theological to that book, and every exception justified by a number of reasons, to which he never yet vouchsafed any answer.' Gassendus, in a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... to it. From the same causes, by natural sequence, came that so-called Arminianism[104:1] which, instead of urging the immediate necessity and duty of conversion, was content with commending a "diligent use of means," which might be the hopeful antecedent of that divine grace. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... is a correct copy of the inscription, as entered in Bishop Forbes's MS., vol. 9, dated on title page, 1761. The entry of inscriptions is immediately subsequent to a copied letter or memorandum of May, 1764, and antecedent to ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... more requires to be said. The second [Greek: OI] was safe to be dropped in a collocation of letters like that. It might also have been anticipated, that there would be found copyists to be confused by the antecedent [Greek: KAI]. Accordingly the Peshitto, Lewis, and Curetonian render the place 'et dicentes;' shewing that they mistook [Greek: KAI OI ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... as in that of Egypt, there was presented an historic epos anterior in time. But in no case were furnished hints so suggestive as those which ancient history furnishes to us, nor any which would answer the purposes of philosophy; in no case was there presented a completed arch, but only antecedent parts of a structure yet in suspense respecting its own conclusion. Fate uncourteously insisted upon making her disclosures by separate instalments; she would advance nothing at any rate of discount. What, therefore, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... Cuseans; Amon for the Amonians; and Asur, or the Assyrian, for the people of Assyria. Hence, when it was said, that the Ninevite performed any great action, it has been ascribed to a person Ninus, the supposed founder of Nineve. And as none of the Assyrian conquests were antecedent to Pul, and Assur Adon, writers have been guilty of an unpardonable anticipation, in ascribing those conquests to the first king of the country. A like anticipation, amounting to a great many centuries, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... accomplish in eight and a half years; and it is quite certain that, if all the quotations had had to be verified and furnished with exact references, a much longer time, or the employment of much more collaboration, would have been required. With much antecedent preparation, with much skilled co-operation, and with strenuous effort, it took more than nine years to produce the first three letters of the alphabet of the Oxford New ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray

... which may properly be called impressions of reflexion, because derived from it. These again are copied by the memory and imagination, and become ideas; which perhaps in their turn give rise to other impressions and ideas. So that the impressions of reflexion are only antecedent to their correspondent ideas; but posterior to those of sensation, and derived from them. The examination of our sensations belongs more to anatomists and natural philosophers than to moral; and therefore shall not at present be entered ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... should a child be introduced to the new sources of information which books supply: and this, not only because immediate cognition is of far greater value than mediate cognition; but also, because the words contained in books can be rightly interpreted into ideas, only in proportion to the antecedent experience of things. Observe next, that this formal instruction, far too soon commenced, is carried on with but little reference to the laws of mental development. Intellectual progress is of necessity from the concrete to the abstract. But regardless of this, highly abstract studies, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... the age moved the young, nation to own justice as antecedent and superior to the state, and to found the rights of the citizen on the rights of man. And yet, in regenerating its institutions, it was not guided by any speculative theory or laborious application of metaphysical distinctions. Its form of government grew naturally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... and at the end. The direct and immediate occasion of the discourse lies in Peter's question at the 27th verse of the nineteenth chapter, "We have forsaken all and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?" But as the parable sprang from Peter's question, so Peter's question sprang from an antecedent fact. To that fact, accordingly, we must look as the true ultimate root ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... aim is to prevent, if may be, an unreasonable alarm at, and a useless opposition to, the conclusions of modern science; while, at the same time, it tells them in simple language how far those conclusions really go, and how very groundless is the fear that they will ever subvert a true faith that, antecedent to the most wonderful chain of causation and methodical working which science can establish, there is still a Divine Designer—One who upholds all things "by the word ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... is a successive advance, and an intermediate must not refer back to any except its immediate antecedent, never to its second or third antecedent. A pupil wrote:—Short steps ... stepson ... real son ... more a son ... Morrison. Here, "more a son" refers to the comparison between "real son" and "stepson," but ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... like Athanase, with a handsome girl, like Suzanne, for instance, might seem in a capital, it alarms provincial parents, and destroys the hopes of marriage of a poor young man when possibly the fortune of a rich one might cause such an unfortunate antecedent to be overlooked. Between the depravity of certain liaisons and a sincere love, a man of honor and no fortune will not hesitate: he prefers the misfortunes of virtue to the evils of vice. But in the provinces women with whom a young man call fall in love are rare. A rich young girl ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... deified and half-divine natures [investigated by this author in several of his antecedent chapters] a whole order of other beings is especially herein distinguished, that whilst the former either proceed of mankind, or seek human intercourse, these form a segregated society—one might say, a peculiar kingdom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... intellect." This band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry and music and dancing and astronomy and mathematics. I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams the soul lays the foundations of nature. The truth and grandeur of their ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... expression or other is now an essential element in the highest presentation of human life. Here is not the Unknown. On the contrary, we are in the very heart of science; tragedy to the modern is not [Greek: tuchae], but a thing of cause and effect, invariable antecedent and invariable consequent. It is the presence of this tragic force underlying action that gives to all Hugo's work its lofty quality, its breadth, and generality, and fills both it, and us who read, with pity and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... picture of the rapid progress of the scepticism in England. Everywhere, a disbelief in witchcraft was becoming fashionable in the upper classes; but it was a disbelief that arose entirely from a strong sense of its antecedent improbability. All who were opposed to the orthodox faith united in discrediting witchcraft. They laughed at it, as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque and ludicrous conceptions, as so essentially incredible that it would be a waste of time to examine it. This spirit had arisen since ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... those heads might not be on their shoulders—there might be no shoulders—but arranged about the limbs. If one jumped up in the air it was impossible to predict whether he would ever come down again. That he came down yesterday was no guarantee that he would do it next time. For every day antecedent and consequent varied, and gravitation and everything else changed from hour to hour. To-day a child's body might be so light that it was impossible for it to descend from its chair to the floor; but to-morrow, in attempting the experiment ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... hundred miles of where I was when it met, nor one in which I took any part at all. He also introduced other resolutions, passed at other meetings, and by combining the whole, although they were all antecedent to the two State Conventions and the one National Convention I have mentioned, still he insisted, and now insists, as I understand, that I am in ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... long as these ideas in your wife are directed to YOU, they are, no doubt, innocent, but take care that they be not accompanied with too much pain. In other respects, also, spare her delicacy. Let all the antecedent parts of your life, if there are such, which would give her pain, be concealed from her; her happiness and her respect for you would suffer from this misplaced confidence. Allow her to retain that flower of ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... intuition at all," said Warner reprovingly. "It's a reasonable opinion, formed in your mind by antecedent conditions. You call it intuition, because you don't take the trouble to discover the circumstances that led to its production. It's only lazy minds that fall back upon second sight, mind-reading ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the business at home would be more or less shown up, that this was particularly unfortunate just at this time in view of Lord Kitchener's lamented death, that the papers must be limited to those bearing upon the period antecedent to the actual landing of the army in the Gallipoli Peninsula, that if this last proviso was accepted I would go fully into the question and report in detail, and that if the proviso was not accepted I ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... far as I know," said the father, with a backward nod to indicate the antecedent of the pronoun. Following which, he said what lay uppermost in his mind. "I been allowin' maybe you'd come back this time with your head sot on lettin' that ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... questions become. A hundred years hence, should science increase in the mean time, the solutions which are satisfactory to us will be looked down upon by our posterity, as the speculations of our fathers antecedent to Adam Smith's time are looked down ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... from the more phlegmatic opponents, who failed to sweep them away. The result was to save Ladysmith, or rather—what was most really important—to save the organized force that was there shut in. The brilliant antecedent campaign, the offensive right and left strokes, the prompt and timely resolve of Yule to retreat just as he did, and the consequent concentration, utterly frustrated the Boers' combinations, and shattered antecedently their expectations of subduing the British by the cheaper method of exhaustion. ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan

... 1850, under the leadership of Henry Clay, constitutes one of the chief landmarks in the history of the great conflict between freedom and slavery. It was the futile attempt of legislative diplomacy to escape the fatal logic of antecedent facts. The war with Mexico, like the annexation of Texas which paved the way for it, was inspired by the lust for slave territory. No sophistry could disguise this fact, nor could its significance be overstated. The prophets of slavery ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... however,—such, at least, as have been thought worthy of preservation among his works,—are a prodigious improvement upon the tenuity of his predecessor, and immeasurably superior in poetical fire and elegance to those of any successor antecedent to Warton. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... of judicious cares, and a succession of partial resurrections, it had been restored to something like its original modest dignity. Durnmelling, too, had in part sunk into ruin, and had been but partially recovered from it; still, it swelled important beside its antecedent Thornwick. Nothing but a deep ha-ha separated the two houses, of which the older and smaller occupied the higher ground. Between it and the ha-ha was nothing but grass—in front of the house fine enough and well enough kept to be called lawn, had not Godfrey's pride refused the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... of Job is an Arab poem, antecedent to the Mosaic dispensation. It represents the mind of a good man not enlightened by an actual revelation, but seeking about for one. In no other book is the desire and necessity for a Mediator so intensely expressed. The personality of God, the I AM of the Hebrews, is most vividly ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... dull, or there is something a little confused in the apostrophe to Mr. Pitt. Verse 55th is the antecedent to verses 57th and 58th, but in verse ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... been the inglorious speciality of the theological school to insist in this way upon moral depravity as an antecedent condition of intellectual error. De Maistre in this respect was not unworthy of his fellows. He believed that his opponents were even worse citizens than they were bad philosophers, and it was his horror of them ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... advert to the internal situation of the United States," they continued, "we deem it equally natural and becoming to compare the present period with that immediately antecedent to the operation of the government, and to contrast it with the calamities in which the state of war still involves several of the European nations, as the reflections deduced from both tend to justify ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... that we must return, not only in religion and its practice, but in philosophy, if we are to establish a firm foundation for that newer society and civilization that are to help us to achieve the "Great Peace." Antecedent systems failed, and subsequent systems have failed; in this alone, the philosophy of Christianity, is there safety, for it alone is consonant with the revealed will ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... Josephus; but no one knows who first imported them. It is something extraordinary to see this people, professedly so grave, and strangers to every branch of literature, reading with pleasure the former work, which should seem to require some degree of taste, and antecedent historical knowledge. They all read it much, and can by memory repeat many passages; which yet I could not discover that they understood the beauties of. Is it not a little singular to see these books in the hands of fishermen, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... your noting, that all the while that he was in the world, putting himself upon those other preparations which were to be antecedent to his being made a sacrifice for us, no man, though he told what he came about to many, had, as we read of, a heart once to thank him for what he came about. No; they railed on him they degraded him, they called him devil, they said he was mad ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... of interpretation, attained supremacy precisely thereby: the origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite sense possible, as origin out of an INTENTION; people were agreed in the belief that the value of an action lay in the value of its intention. The intention as the sole origin and antecedent history of an action: under the influence of this prejudice moral praise and blame have been bestowed, and men have judged and even philosophized almost up to the present day.—Is it not possible, however, that ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... involves an "interference" with natural law; and if we have to admit our ignorance as to {210} how such a force would operate and bring results to pass, let us remind ourselves that the ultimate "how?"—the bridge between antecedent and consequent, and why the former should be followed by the latter—always and inevitably escapes us. Why in the thousand and more observed forms of snow-crystals the filaments of ice should always be arranged at angles of 60 degrees or 120 degrees; why sulphate of potash and sulphate of alumina ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... nomenclature.—We shall deal later with a method by which a responsive current of action is obtained without any antecedent current of injury. 'Negative variation' has then no meaning. Or, again, a current of injury may sometimes undergo a change of direction (see note, p. 12). In view of these considerations it is necessary ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... as she came through the kitchen. "He (without any antecedent) has promised he'll do all he can to fetch her forth; and if he doesn't, and metely soon too, he'll ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... sufficient to say, "The right of property is demonstrated by the existence of property; the function of the civil law is purely declaratory." To say that, is to confess that there is no reply to those who question the legitimacy of the fact itself. Every right must be justifiable in itself, or by some antecedent right; property is no exception. For this reason, M. Cousin has sought to base it upon the SANCTITY of the human personality, and the act by which the will assimilates a thing. "Once touched by man," says ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. From the age of 17 I had never even witnessed the excitement attending a Presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my own candidacy, and at but one of them was I eligible as ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant

... the strict sense, is not to be had, there is another condition that may be rightly demanded—resolute honesty. This I hope may be attained as well from one point of view as from another, at least that there is no very great antecedent reason to the contrary. In past generations indeed there was such a reason. Strongly negative views could only be expressed at considerable personal risk and loss. But now, public opinion is so ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... Both attaining, thanks to very different causes, an extraordinarily early maturity, completely worked themselves out in an extraordinarily short time. Neither had, so far as we know, the least assistance from antecedent vernacular models. Each achieved an extraordinary perfection and intensity, Icelandic in spirit, Provencal ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... what blood and lineage were descended all those who had any claim to be considered as possessors of any such luxuries. For blood and lineage he himself had a must profound respect. He counted back his own ancestors to some period long antecedent to the Conquest; and could tell you, if you would listen to him, how it had come to pass that they, like Cedric the Saxon, had been permitted to hold their own among the Norman barons. It was not, according to his showing, on account of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... mother. There was no question but that Libby started and continued the whole trouble, but the unnatural fact that she was willing to make sworn statements jeopardizing her mother made her testimony have all the earmarks of antecedent probability. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... They are as little constructive as the age itself, as anything that we mean when we use the epithet Louis Quinze. Of everything thus indicated one predicates at once unconsciousness, the momentum of antecedent thought modified by the ease born of habit; the carelessness due to having one's thinking done for one and the license of proceeding fancifully, whimsically, even freakishly, once the lines and limits of one's action have been settled ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... Hence, too, perhaps, the width of his attainments, the enlightened spirit he displayed in his intercourse with the natives, and his cultivation of his literary powers as the main resource of his leisure while isolated from the society of his own race. His start in life belonged to a period long antecedent to the days of competitive examinations, but his assiduity and desire for knowledge needed no stimulant and were the keys to his early success. "His perfect acquaintance with the languages of Southern India—Teloogoo and Mahratta, as well as Hindoostanee—was," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... nor have utility by Fate, but that there is an end of Fate's being the cause of all things. Now if any one shall say that Chrysippus makes not Fate the absolute cause of all things, but only a PROCATARCLICAL (or antecedent) one, he will again show that he is contradictory to himself, since he excessively praises Homer for ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... impossible to reflect on the changed state of the American continent without the deepest astonishment. Formerly it must have swarmed with great monsters: now we find mere pigmies, compared with the antecedent allied races. If Buffon had known of the gigantic sloth and armadillo-like animals, and of the lost Pachydermata, he might have said with a greater semblance of truth that the creative force in America had lost its power, rather than that it had never possessed ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... Cause of these Appetites; they are previous to any such Prospect; and so likewise is the Desire of doing Good; with this Difference, that being seated in the intellectual Part, this last, though Antecedent to Reason, may yet be improved and regulated by it, and, I will add, is no otherwise a Virtue than ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... droll squinting W—— having been caught putting the inside of the master's desk to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he did not know that the thing had been forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... of all ages do perceive great truths in occurrences that are as commonplace as the fall of an apple, or the disturbance of a hanging lamp. Trifles are full of meaning to them, because their minds are already prepared to arrive at certain conclusions by means of antecedent reflections. Simple and familiar incidents, thus accidentally associated with the history of grand discoveries, are the channels through which the accumulating waters at length descend, rather than the rills which feed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... evolution; but the collective man evolves better forms of knowledge and behaviour. The organization of society, therefore, produces successive states, in each of which the principle of freedom is better established than in the antecedent. Permanency in republican government is, therefore, based upon corresponding experience and culture, and its possibilities grow ever stronger. The relation of American democracy to the systems which have preceded it forms the latest proof ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... and do it well; and there is no antecedent to it, in any origin or station, that will tell against us with the Almighty, or ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... the meaning of the antecedent, but does not explain it and does not add a new thought, ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton

... merchants, diplomatists with a headache,—any of our modern grandees under difficulties,—might have envied that peace over which Mr. Goren presided: and he was an enviable man. He loved his craft, he believed he had not succeeded the millions of antecedent tailors in vain.' ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... with, they are personal relations; they are relations the truth of which cannot be expressed except by the use of personal pronouns. We need not ask whether the personality of God can be proved antecedent to religion, or as a basis for a religion yet to be established; in the only sense in which we can be concerned with it, religion is an experience of the personality of God, and of our own personality in relation to it. 'O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney

... attributes of the Deity, or the existence of a future state, in order to prove the reality of miracles. That reality always must be proved by evidence. We assert only, that in miracles adduced in support of revelation there is not any such antecedent improbability as no testimony can surmount. And for the purpose of maintaining this assertion, we contend, that the incredibility of miracles related to have been wrought in attestation of a message from ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley



Words linked to "Antecedent" :   anterior, subsequent, relation, pre-existing, preexisting, plasma thromboplastin antecedent, cause, primogenitor, ancestor, root, pre-existent, ascendent, foremother, anticipatory, progenitor, forerunner, relative, temporal relation, forefather, preexistent, preceding, prevenient, referent, antecede, descendant, forbear, forebear, ascendant, prior, antecedence



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